Tampa Bay’s 10 reporter Mike Deeson thought he had a pretty good scoop: At a time when city of Tampa employees were getting raises around 3 percent, Mayor Pam Iorio’s political guru Fran Davin was slated for a whopping 17 percent hike for her part-time special assistant job.
Deeson — who skewered Davin earlier this year for staying on the job years longer than she promised and making more than $77,000 a year for a three-day-a-week job — dutifully started putting together a story package for the evening newscast late last week. He got a city employee on camera suitably outraged by the inequity between rank-and-file raises and Davin’s.
But when he called for comment from Iorio’s spokeswoman, he got a call back from the mayor herself. The $93,194 salary listed for Davin in this year’s published budget was a typo, Deeson said he was told by the mayor. Davin will be getting a 3 percent increase.
For the record, we’re not suggesting it was anything but an honest error. Honest.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.